


Please Don't Go

by missmichellebelle



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, References to Illness, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-26
Updated: 2013-04-26
Packaged: 2017-12-14 15:44:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/838584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmichellebelle/pseuds/missmichellebelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kurt Hummel is seven years old, all he knows is that one day his mommy is okay and then suddenly she’s not okay anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Please Don't Go

Kurt won’t understand it until he’s older, and he’ll look back and wonder how he got through it at all. He’ll tell himself it’s because he was seven, and when you’re that young, it’s easier not to see some of the bad parts of the world. When he’s older, and the memories are still sharp because they’ll always be important, he’ll understand them better.

But when Kurt Hummel is seven years old, all he knows is that one day his mommy is okay and then suddenly she’s not okay anymore.

His daddy takes her to the doctor, and that’s supposed to be it. Kurt knows how the doctor works.

“Did you get shots?” He asks her, curled into her side on the bed.

“No,” she says, and kisses his head.

“Do you want soup?” She always makes him soup after he goes to the doctor.

“That sounds wonderful, sunshine.”

Daddy helps him, but Kurt does it almost completely on his own. And now that Mommy has been to the doctor, and had soup, she’ll get better. That’s how it works.

Only it doesn’t.

She stops picking him up from school. His daddy comes to get him, but he’s always a little late, and he smells bad, like cars. He doesn’t ask Kurt how his day was, like his mommy does, but he walks him inside and kisses him on the head and goes back to work. His mommy is always there, at home. She sits on the couch, wrapped in their favorite quilt, and she takes naps.

She takes a lot of naps. She takes more naps than  _Kurt_. It’s funny.

“Mommy is just tired a lot, Kurt,” she tells him, as she strokes his hair.

“You need a bed time,” he says, and she laughs, and he smiles. He likes making his mommy laugh.

“Maybe.” And then she gets quiet, hugging him close. “Do you have any work for school?”

“We have to read a book,” Kurt recites.

“Why don’t you go pick one out from the shelf for us?” She murmurs, and he whines but eventually goes to get it.

His mommy used to help other kids learn to play the piano. Sometimes, they would come home from school and Kurt would sit on the floor with his toys and listen to the twinkly music. He likes it. Sometimes, his mommy picks him up and sets him on the weird chair and they play music together. She always says he’s good at it, and Kurt likes to be good at things.

But there’s never any twinkly music anymore. She doesn’t play the piano, and the kids don’t come over. She stays in bed more and more, and takes a lot of naps.

So Kurt sits at the piano sometimes, and drops his fingers against the keys until his daddy makes him stop.

“Your mom is sleeping, buddy,” he scolds, quietly. Things are quiet a lot now. Kurt doesn’t understand.

One day, his mommy doesn’t have hair anymore. He cries. He doesn’t like it.

“You don’t like my haircut?” She teases, rubbing his back as he wails in her lap. She looks like the baby doll he has in his toy box.

“Mommy, your hair was so pretty,” Kurt whimpers at her, and she dabs at his really wet cheeks with her special soft tissue and then kisses each one.

“It’s a good thing it’s going to grow back.” And she kisses his nose, and he smiles.

“Will you teach me how to braid it?” The girls at school have braids in their hair, and Kurt’s hair is too short. She laughs.

“Of course. All kinds of braids.”

His daddy is home more often, and starts cooking. Kurt doesn’t know why his mommy doesn’t cook now—Daddy says she’s tired, and not to bother her, and he looks sad. Kurt doesn’t like his dinner, because it always tastes not right, and he tells his daddy so.

“Get used to it, kid,” he says, and Kurt frowns at his plate.

“Can I help?” He asks. Mommy used to let him help when she made dinner. They used to dance around the kitchen, and she’d lift him up and twirl him and say, “when did you get so  _big?_ ” even though Kurt is the smallest boy in his class at school. They used to sing. Now they only sing when he cuddles with her during the day, while Daddy is at work, and her voice is soft.

They don’t dance.

His dad laughs, that rough sort of noise that still makes Kurt happy to hear. He loves his daddy.

“If you think you can, okay.”

He cuts his finger slicing potatoes, and his mommy gets  _so mad_. But he’s okay—he didn’t even  _cry_ , he tells her, and she kisses his finger.

“I like cooking,” Kurt says. “And baking. Mommy, can we make cookies?”

“Maybe tomorrow, when you’ve recovered from your injuries, my brave little chef.” She tickles him, and then his daddy grabs them both in a hug, and Kurt has never felt so happy.

But they don’t make cookies.

And Kurt stops feeling as happy.

His mommy stops getting out of bed completely, and her skin starts to look funny. She stops looking like the mommy he knows, and starts to look like someone else. Like someone turned his mommy into a shrinky-dink and cooked her too long.

One day, his daddy yells at him for crawling in the bed with her, and he cries again. She yells back, and she uses words that don’t make sense, like, “it doesn’t  _matter_ anymore,” and, “let me spend time with him before I can’t.”

Kurt doesn’t understand.

That night, his mommy cries and holds him, and Kurt tries to hug back and make her feel happy again. He can’t remember the last time he heard her laugh.

Kurt’s eighth birthday comes, and goes. They don’t have a party with his friends, but they have a tea party in bed. His daddy buys them a cheesecake that his mommy really likes, and Kurt doesn’t understand why people would eat cheese in cake, but he likes it.

“Told you,” his mommy laughs out, and Kurt grins under his birthday hat (because hats are for tea parties, not crowns).

Things are supposed to get better then. Kurt knows it. He’s eight, and things will get better, and his mommy will be his mommy again.

Except, her daddy takes her to the doctor. No, he takes her to the  _hospital_ , which is different. Hospitals are big, and scary, and they have lots of doctors. His mommy says it’s for emergencies.

His daddy comes home without her, makes hot cocoa (and puts  _marshmallows_  in it), and sits down with Kurt on the couch. He turns on The Sound of Music, but turns the volume all the way down and Kurt doesn’t understand.

He wants to know where his mommy went, and why things are quiet, and why he feels so sad.

“Kurt…” His daddy looks at him, and he looks sad, too. He holds his arms open, and Kurt goes into them, shuffling on his knees so he doesn’t spill his mug. They never drink hot cocoa on the couch, because he might spill. But his daddy doesn’t seem to care right now.

“Where’s mommy?” Kurt asks, and his daddy looks down at him, but doesn’t say anything.

Kurt doesn’t understand.

“Mommy is sick, buddy,” Daddy says.

“Is that why she’s at the doctor?” She must be really sick, because Kurt has never gone to the hospital when he was sick. Maybe grown ups have to go to the hospital when they get sick.

“Yeah…”

“Is she coming home soon?” Kurt misses her. He doesn’t see her very much anymore, but she was there, and he could smell her and hear her voice and sleep next to her. He misses her.

“I don’t know. She’s… Kurt, Mommy is  _really_  sick. I don’t know if the doctor can make her better.”

His daddy sounds so sad.

“But doctors can always make people better. Did they give her soup?” Kurt frowns. “I gave Mommy soup and she got better.”

“I…” His daddy hugs him, and Kurt is careful not to spill his cocoa.

“We should bring Mommy soup,” Kurt tells his daddy, and he just nods. Soup makes everything better.

But it doesn’t.

Kurt realizes that he does not like hospitals. He does not like that his mommy is in the hospital, in her white room, and her weird dress, and all these things in her arms. He’s not supposed to touch, and they scare him.

He’s not allowed on the bed with her anymore, so he sits in the chair. The hospital is boring, and he doesn’t have toys, and the TV plays stupid things. Kurt wants to watch movies, or sing songs, but every time he starts to get loud, he gets yelled at.

Most of the time, his mommy sleeps.

She sleeps and sleeps and sleeps and sleeps, and sometimes Kurt will hold her hand, and it feels weird. It doesn’t feel like her hand anymore.

They go home every night without her, and every night, Kurt kisses her and tells her he loves her. And every night, his daddy cries, and Kurt doesn’t understand.

And then one day, his mommy isn’t sleeping. Her eyes are open and she looks at him, but she’s looking at him funny. He tries to talk to her, to tell her about Daddy, but everything she says doesn’t make sense. Not because she uses big words, but she says confusing things.

“I thought I was going to fall in a volcano,” she is saying, and Daddy is staring at her strangely, and Kurt doesn’t know what she’s talking about. “Mom,” she calls, suddenly. “Mom, let’s go back to New York. I loved New York. Why don’t we ever go back?”

“We can go to New York, mommy,” Kurt tells her, but she doesn’t look at her or talk to him. She doesn’t talk to Daddy, either. She talks to people Kurt doesn’t know, or can’t see, about lots of things. Kurt thinks maybe they’re her imaginary friends, which isn’t fair, because he wants to talk to his mommy and can’t they wait? He’s been waiting so patiently.

“Mommy, when are you coming home?” He tugs on her hand and her eyes look past him.

“Just a little bit of vanilla, two teaspoons, maybe, and then slowly stir in the flour and use your hands, the texture is better that way—”

“Mommy, I miss you, when are you coming home?”

“Dad, I want to go to the movie, why won’t you let me go? You never let me do anything anymore.”

“Mommy—”

“Kurt, buddy.” His daddy is right there, and his mommy is talking to her imaginary friends again. “Why don’t we go and get some snacks? Maybe Mommy wants pudding?”

She’s still talking, very fast so that Kurt can’t hear the words, and she’s still talking when they leave. Mommy likes jello more than pudding, so he’ll have to remember to tell Daddy that.

Before they leave that night, she suddenly shouts, “Kurt!”

“Mommy, stop yelling,” he whispers. They get mad when he yells in the hospital, but no one gets mad this time.

“Kurt! Kurt, sunshine, where are you? Kurt!” She’s crying, and he stands up, pushing closer, holding her hand.

“Mommy, I’m right here, I’m not lost,” he says, but she doesn’t look at him.

“Don’t do that,” she whispers, crying. “Don’t scare me like that.”

“I didn’t mean to, Mommy.” Kurt doesn’t know what he did, but his mommy is talking to him after not talking to him for so long.

“What would I ever do if I lost you?” She’s not even looking at him, but her hand touches at his hair. He keeps holding it, anyway. “You’re my whole life, what would I do if something happened to you?”

“I won’t let anything happen, Mommy, I promise.”

She just starts to say his name, over and over, whispering it and crying.

“I promise, Mommy, I promise.”

The next time they go to the hospital, it’s the middle of the night. Kurt’s daddy wakes him up, and carries him to the car, and doesn’t say anything. Kurt wonders if his mommy is better now, and they can take her home. He hopes so.

But his daddy is crying.

Kurt is tired.

When they get to his mommy’s room, there are doctors there, and she’s asleep. His daddy is still crying. He doesn’t cry like Kurt cries—when Kurt cries, he makes noise, because the only way people know if he’s crying is if he let’s them know. But his daddy doesn’t make noise. He just cries, like there’s water on his face, like he doesn’t want people to know.

For some reason, it makes it sadder.

“—about a half hour ago,” one of the doctors says. “We’ll give you a few moments alone.”

His daddy sits down in the chair, and then pulls Kurt closer instead of letting him sit in a different chair. He’s too big now, to sit in Daddy’s lap, but Daddy makes him anyway. He hugs Kurt close, and Kurt can feel his crying now.

“What’s wrong?” Kurt asks, looking at Mommy. He can tell something is wrong, but he isn’t sure. He knows his mommy doesn’t look right, because she’s sick. She has no hair, and she doesn’t smile, and she looks like one of those scary zombies from Halloween decorations. “Daddy, Mommy doesn’t look okay, we should get the doctor back.”

But his daddy cries harder. Kurt frowns, turning in his arms and petting his head.

“It’s okay, Daddy, she’ll come home soon.”

It doesn’t help.

“Kurt,” his daddy starts to say. His daddy, who is always strong, who never gets upset, who smiles big and laughs loud, looks so sad. He never looks this sad. “Mommy isn’t coming home,” he explains.

“Why not?” Kurt frowns more. He doesn’t like the hospital at all.

“Mommy—she isn’t with us anymore, buddy. Mommy is gone.”

“No she’s not, Daddy, don’t be silly. Mommy is right there.”

“Kurt… Remember how Mommy was sick?”

He nods, because that’s why she’s been like this, that’s why they’re in the hospital. That’s why everything is sad and quiet, because his mommy is happiness and music and dancing. The world isn’t right when she’s sick.

“Mommy was really sick, Kurt. So sick, that the doctors… The doctors couldn’t help her. Kurt, Mommy… Mommy died.”

“What’s died?” Kurt doesn’t understand.

“It… It means that Mommy went away with God, and she can’t be here anymore.”

“But she can come back?” Kurt’s heart is starting to hurt.

“…no. No, Mommy can’t ever come back.”

“…but why would God do that?” Kurt’s lip wobbles, and he looks at his mommy. She’s  _right there_ , how can she be  _gone?_  “Why would he take Mommy away from us?”

“Because sometimes people have to go, Kurt. It’s…” His daddy is still crying, and for a second he cries a little harder, and his voice sounds weird and high and hurts Kurt’s ears. “It’s their time. It was her time.”

No. That’s not fair.

They still need to dance. And go to New York.

She has to teach him how to make cookies, and how to braid hair.

She has to  _be_  here.

She’s his  _mommy_ , she  _has_  to.

“No,” he cries softly, clinging to his daddy. “No it’s not, make her come back. She has to come back, Mommy has to come back, she has to, make her come back.”

“I’m sorry, Kurt.”

“Mommy, come back! Mommy! Make her come back!”

“I’m so sorry.”


End file.
